


A Week of One Day

by merriman



Category: What Happened To Monday (2017)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Siblings, dance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2019-02-13 09:17:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12980934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merriman/pseuds/merriman
Summary: Saturday has lived one seventh of a life, but every seventh day she is dancing.





	A Week of One Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thecarlysutra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecarlysutra/gifts).
  * Translation into Русский available: [Неделя из одного дня](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15522930) by [fandom Women 2018 (WTF_Women_2018)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WTF_Women_2018/pseuds/fandom%20Women%202018)



> Thank you to A for being my always trusty beta.

~~~~~~~  
People often say to me, 'I don't know anything about dance.' I say, 'Stop. You got up this morning, and you're walking. You are an expert.'   
-Twyla Tharp  
~~~~~~~

The first time Saturday went outside wasn't a school day, obviously. Some of her sisters had gone to school and come back telling them all about the lessons and the other children and all the people on the streets. Saturday didn't go to school. Their grandfather had asked her what she wanted to do with her first day out and Saturday had asked if she could learn how to dance. So dance class it was. Just one to start, to see if she liked it.

That first day she stood there in her little pink leotard and tights and looked around at the other children and suddenly realized that none of them looked like her. Of course she'd known that they weren't her sisters. She'd watched the daily reviews along with the rest of her family and seen all the other children at school. Friday had taken the pictures from the reviews they had recorded and made a little chart for all of them to memorize so they'd know everyone's names. But Saturday had watched all those faces from the comfort of her sisters' company. Standing there in the dance studio, there wasn't a single other person with her face.

Saturday looked over at her grandfather, ready to run to him and beg to go home, when the teacher called them all over and helped them to line up all the same. She showed them all how to place their feet, how to hold their hands, how to move together. Saturday watched in the mirror, seeing all the other children in the class move the same, and suddenly it was okay. They might not have her face, but they could be the same anyhow. 

On their way home from the class Saturday skipped and twirled and pointed her toes. Her grandfather laughed and swung her hand a little.

"If you want to keep going, I'll set it up," Grandfather told her. "We'll make this your school day, hmm? Then you and Sunday can have your school lessons on Mondays."

~~~~~~~  
Every time I dance, I'm trying to prove myself to myself.   
-Misty Copeland  
~~~~~~~

The apartment was plenty big enough for all seven girls and Grandfather, at least while they were still small. They all had their own little spaces. Thursday had claimed a corner in the loft early on, pasting up pictures of far off places. Monday had a favorite window she read by. Saturday found a spot near the bookcase by Grandfather's room where the shelves were just the right height for her to use in place of a barre. She practiced whenever she could, pushing furniture out of the way so she would have the room she needed.

Saturday had practiced long and hard for her recital, even going so far as to recruit Sunday and Monday to teach them some of the steps so she could practice with other girls near her. They hadn't really liked it like she did, but they'd humored her.

While Grandfather did Saturday's hair up just right, she watched Monday and Wednesday argue over whose turn it was to do the dishes. They should probably stop trading chores. They could never remember who'd done what. 

"Girls?" Grandfather said, pausing mid-braid to look over at Monday and Wednesday. "Sort it out before we get back."

The recital was a blur of faces Saturday didn't recognize and brighter lights than she'd expected and people taking pictures. Through it all she focused on her grandfather in the audience and the girls in her dance class. She made sure she was recording the whole thing so she could show it off to her sisters when they got home.

Except when they got home Thursday had left without telling anyone and she'd hurt herself and then they'd all had to deal with the consequences and Saturday almost deleted the whole day from her bracelet before they reviewed it. It had been too good a day, and too horrible too. She almost quit her dance class the next week. If she didn't go to class, there wasn't a chance for anyone else to go out and get in trouble.

Saturday stayed up late on Friday night, awake long after her sisters had gone to sleep. She thought about her leotards and her tights and her ballet shoes and the lights and the stage and the people watching. And she thought about Thursday and her skateboard and how Monday had screamed when Grandfather cut off her fingertip to match Thursday's and how Tuesday had fainted and Wednesday had gritted her teeth and Friday couldn't look and Sunday had prayed. Saturday had cried silently, focused on the music in her head from the recital. She could hear it now.

"Don't quit," Sunday said from next to her. 

Saturday opened her eyes and looked at her sister. "But…"

Sunday shook her head. "It's yours. Don't let any of us ever take it away from you."

So Saturday stuck with it and when she was twelve her ballet teacher took her aside and asked if she would be interested in joining the advanced class. For one brief shining moment, Saturday considered it. Advanced class meant going up on pointe, it meant she really was good at this.

But the advanced class met not just on Saturday afternoons, but Mondays and Wednesdays. This wasn't like Friday wanting to take that extra computer class that she could watch through Monday's camera and make up for later. It wasn't like school where she could get what she needed from the reviews and from special tutoring with Grandfather at the kitchen table with Sunday. Neither of them had ever set foot in the school the rest of their sisters went to, but they knew what they needed to know. They learned history and literature and science and math. 

Dance, though. No. That was muscle memory and physical training and she couldn't share that through a recording or a camera.

Saturday told her teacher she'd have to talk to her grandfather. She went to ballet for another month, then quit. No one took it away from her. She took it away from herself.

~~~~~~~  
Every dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart.   
-Martha Graham  
~~~~~~~

The same place that Saturday had gone to ballet class also offered modern, jazz, tap, ballroom, and more. Some of the classes were impossible, meeting on Tuesdays and Thursdays, or Friday evenings. Others were long-term commitments. Saturday made herself a list of all the classes she could try on her day out that she wouldn't need to go to every single week. They were special one-time-only workshops and casual dance for people who just wanted to move around more.

Every so often, on her way to a class or a workshop, Saturday would hear the music from the ballet studio or she would see her old instructor. She would hurry past to whatever studio she was in that day and pretend she hadn't seen them at all. Whatever dance she was learning that day, she would push as hard as she could, determined not to think about the ranks of ballerinas she'd left behind.

One day, when Saturday was seventeen, she arrived to find that her class for the day had been canceled. Postponed until the following weekend. Saturday stood there in the lobby, blinking back tears because what was she supposed to do with her day if she wasn't dancing? She found the bathroom quickly and splashed cold water on her face. No puffy eyes for her. 

While she stood at the sinks, three ballet students came in, all talking about the auditions that day. There was some big show - Saturday had seen posters for the auditions for the past month - and they were nervous.

Saturday followed them out and watched them as they critiqued each other's form.

"No no," she told one of them after a while, going over to correct her foot placement. "You have to keep your leg like this." She demonstrated herself to show them. "Feel it from the hips."

The other ballerinas had giggled at first. Who was she to correct them? But then she demonstrated again, slower, and smiled when the first one repeated her movement.

"Good," she told them. "Keep at it. You'll be wonderful."

~~~~~~~  
Opportunity dances with those already on the dance floor.   
-H. Jackson Brown, Jr.  
~~~~~~~

There was a woman in Saturday's jazz class who had bright red nails. Her name was Nancy and she always threw herself into the day's exercises like a spring coiled and released.

"It's called _Dress for Success_ ," Saturday told her sisters as she showed them her nails. She'd bought the polish on her day out, then done her nails on Sunday at home. "I can take it off if you don't like it." 

Monday took Saturday's hand and peered at her nails. The rest of the sisters examined their own nails closely. They weren't quite identical, just close enough. Tuesday tended to bite hers when she was nervous - which was always - so they'd all taken to trimming their nails short to match.

"I like it," Tuesday said after a moment. "Maybe if I have nail polish on I won't bite my nails so much. I wouldn't want to ruin them."

"I think it's perfect for our new job," Monday said. She held out one of her hands to Saturday. "Do mine? We can touch them up in the evenings and if it's too much trouble, we stop. No big deal."

Thursday mentioned later that Saturday had just appointed herself manicurist for the whole lot of them, but Saturday just shrugged and smiled at her, all teeth and cheer. "I don't mind!"

And she didn't. She started hoarding nail polish, buying a new color every week. On Sundays and Mondays and Tuesdays and every other day of the week, Saturday's nails were gold and pink and turquoise. She tried painting little pictures, adding glitter, layering. Sometimes Tuesday would let her experiment on her fingers too. Nail polish had indeed stopped her chewing her nails. But every Friday morning Saturday would sit down by the windows and carefully strip off her week's work, then replace it with _Dress for Success_. 

On Saturday nights, in the clubs she went to with clients, Saturday would dance and laugh and flirt and drink and tap her bright red nails

~~~~~~~  
How I long to fall just a little bit, to dance out of the lines and stray from the light.   
-Dar Williams  
~~~~~~~

Sunday mornings, Saturday usually slept in. As far as her sisters were concerned, she was probably hung over. But Saturday always tried to stay hydrated. Sure, she puked every so often, but really, she was pretty good at gauging how drunk she was and when she was overdoing it.

She didn't sleep in on Sundays because she was hung over. She slept in on Sundays because all she wanted to do was move and jump and twirl and the day after going out, the apartment was just too small to bear. She slept in on Sundays so she didn't have to see her favorite sister get up early and go out while she was stuck inside for another whole week. If her sisters wanted to think she was sleeping off a night of partying, fine. She knew what they thought of her: vapid, silly, stupid, all looks and no brains. Except they were identical, so her looks were their looks. Karen Settman was just as pretty any day of the week, and on Saturdays Karen Settman could dance. So she did.

~~~~~~~  
If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.  
-George Bernard Shaw  
~~~~~~~

When Saturday was headed home one night, a man tried to take her purse. She punched him in the nose and ran all the way home, kicking off her heels to run in her bare feet. The doorman at her building offered to call the police, but Saturday just brushed him off, assuring him she was fine even though she knew she looked a mess.

Sunday cleaned her cuts and made her tea and everyone gathered around her for comfort while Saturday showed them the face of the man she'd punched. They memorized it, just to be sure they'd know him if they saw him again.

"I'll stay in tomorrow," Sunday offered. "Tuesday, you could use an easy day off from work. I can go in for you."

Tuesday hesitated, but Saturday shook her head.

"No," she told Sunday. "I'm fine. Besides, I have everyone else, and you'll be here to fuss over me on Monday. Go out. Have your day."

So Sunday went out as usual and Wednesday came over to Saturday's bed and woke her up - not that she'd been sleeping but she'd never told them the truth.

"Hey. Get up. We're going to get you in shape," Wednesday told her.

Saturday pulled her pillow over her face. "I am in shape!" she mumbled through it. "I'm in great shape!"

"I mean for defending yourself," Wednesday said. She pulled the pillow away from Saturday and tossed it to the foot of the bed. "Come on. That punch was okay, but you lucked out that he was so surprised that you fought back. I'm going to teach you how to really do some damage."

Saturday considered protesting. But she'd watched Wednesday before. What she did wasn't so different from dancing, really. It was just another set of movements. It was dancing with intent to harm. So she let Wednesday haul her out of bed and she changed into her workout clothes and they spent all that Sunday going over basic self-defense.

"Really, we should all know this," Saturday said as she and Wednesday cleaned up before Sunday got back with dinner. "We all need to be able to defend ourselves."

~~~~~~~  
You live as long as you dance.   
-Rudolf Nureyev  
~~~~~~~

Despite what her sisters had always assumed, Saturday had never done more than make out with anyone, man or woman. The first few times she'd ended up kissing someone in a club, she'd left the recording going and they'd all teased her at great length later on. Part of it was jealousy, Saturday had been sure. After all, who else out of the seven of them was getting any action? Tuesday had once had a tentative kiss with one of the boys at school when they were younger, but Wednesday couldn't stand him (or boys in general) and refused to fake it. They'd all been certain that a boy in Friday's advanced trigonometry class in college had been flirting with her, but she'd never done anything about it. Thursday claimed she wasn't interested in anyone and both Sunday and Monday refused to talk about the subject of sex when it came to themselves.

So Saturday had let them tease her. If that's how they wanted it, sure. And then one night she turned off her recording by mistake, right in the middle of kissing some guy she'd met while dancing. Her sisters had assumed she'd gone all the way and Saturday hadn't corrected them.

Of course, as it turned out, Saturday hadn't slept with anyone until Monday and Tuesday went missing and Sunday was dead and everything was falling apart. She'd always thought if it happened it would have to mean something, but not like that. Not the lives of her remaining sisters. Not her own life. But it did mean all of that. It meant everything. Saturday knew she wasn't good at much. She couldn't do math beyond pre-calc and she was lousy at public speaking. But this wasn't work. This was movement and emotion and connection and those were things Saturday knew. 

In the morning, with Adrian gone off to work, Saturday sat in his bed and thought about Monday. She'd always been close with Sunday, and she'd grown to respect Wednesday. They had what she wanted: Peace and guts. She got along okay with Thursday and Tuesday and she'd protect Friday with every fiber of her being. But Monday? She was the perfect one. The model they all set themselves after when they wore Karen Settman's clothes and to be honest, Saturday had always assumed that Monday _was_ Karen. But apparently there was plenty about Karen, about Monday, they'd never known. 

Saturday got out of bed and found some energy bars in Adrian's cabinets. After the previous few days, for the first time in a long time all Saturday wanted to do was rest and sit, but she had to talk to her sisters. She had to tell them about Monday.

So she did. She called her sisters and she told them everything she knew and when the door burst in and CAB agents (not Adrian, not Adrian, not him, he wasn't there) had their guns aimed at her head, Saturday turned and looked at her sisters, their faces just like hers.

She had never felt so still.

"I love you," she told them. And then the dance was over.


End file.
